Stage 4 was relative alright but Stage 5 will be one of the hardest stages you will need to complete before going to stage 6 which is also another killer stage.

If you’re at stage 4, don’t start Stage 5 unless you know how to handle both variations of Stage 5

The key to completing Sea Dragon Nest will be reach Stage 7 (Sea Dragon itself) with all 8 members alive.

So Stage 5 is one of the stages where 1/2 party members might die, in worse cases, most parties can’t proceed further than here.

Read the guide before watching the video guide footage here : http://www.dneternity.com/2012/06/18/lvl40-sea-dragon-nest-video-guide/

Variation 1: Trio Lizard Brothers

Variation 2: Dancing Minotaur

The variation you can get is entirely random.

I’ll start with Dancing Minotaur because it is the more technical one, and also one in which my current SDN party is better at handling.

As there are too many images for the dancing minotaur guide, I’ll separate the guides so the page loads faster

The first thing you need to know about the dancing minotaur version of stage 5 is this.

I’ll split the whole fight into 4 Phases

Phase 1 (Dancing Minotaur Shield  Up, Pillar killing)

To remove the shield barrier from the main boss, you will need to destroy the pillars around the whole battle space!

there are more pillars shown in the screenshot above!

Here’s the main issue, if anyone steps into the AOE Aura around the main boss, it will trigger cow stampede!

No relics for priest at this point unless it’s for healing, and when you cast it you must know that the boss will not come to your position anytime soon (refer to boss movement pattern below)

Basically 3 Cows (like the ones that storm from gate to gate in minotaur nest) will storm towards EACH character in the team, for around 3-5 waves worth, from summoned from within the main boss itself.

For Non Cleric classes with low defence, every “bang” from the storming cows will deal around 12-15k damage.

So if you get hit for all 3-5 waves, and have less than 50k HP, you’re most probably dead.

Avoiding the cow stampede is easy, IF your party don’t stack up on one another due to the abovementioned reason of  the cow stampede will be summoned for EACH character.

In the event if you’re standing behind another person or vice versa or standing close to each other side by side, when dodging the storming cows, you might run into the path of another team member’s cow stampede pathway.

In other words, always spread out during a cow stampede activation, and if you’re far away from the boss, you can actually see it coming and dodge it easily.

While you’re destroying pillars, small minotaur minions will also spawn, they are not your priority, kill them with AOE attacks while killing pillars.

So what’s the strategy in dealing with this stage where you need to kill pillars while avoiding the main boss D:?

After doing this stage and watching the video guide from FREEDOM in cDN, we realized that the boss minotaur itself DOES NOT change it’s patrolling path

In other words you can plan the way you clear the pillars without even coming close to the main boss, which meant that the chances of any team member to activate the cow stampede will be low.

Here’s the movement pattern shown in the screenshots below.

Note all directions given are using the party spawn point (While facing the boss initially) as  reference

1. From his first spawning position, Boss minotaur will move a little backwards towards the back end of the cliff and walk around there.

2. Boss will move all the way to the left side of the battle space, clear the pillars while moving to right side.

3. Boss Minotaur will now move towards the right central area, either head in the clockwise  direction (where you spawned) or move quickly in the anti clockwise direction

was too slow to make it in the screenshot below, and we triggered the cow stampede, stayed too long at the pillars >_<

4.  Boss Minotaur will move further into the middle-right end of the battlespace, stay at the outer rims of the battle space

5. Boss minotaur will move towards the centre (close to the when you spawn in the stage), continue to stage at the edges.

6. Boss Minotaur will move to the left end of the battle space, you should finished most of the pillars by now!

You should be done with the pillars after around staying alone for 6 movement patterns.

He will run all the way to the back end where the team initially spawned after the 6th movement.

After clearing all the pillars a in-game notification will be shown on screen!

To summarize all the above I’ll lay down how the boss will move again in a simple diagram.

Once again, the perspective used is based on what you actually see in-game and not based on the mini-map, because the mini-map and the actual in-game battle space doesn’t quite match >_<

Like Stage 4 dark cerberus, it’s an inverted V, going right is actually going left on the mini-map and vice versa.

Hence the circle im using here IS NOT the in-game mini-map, it’s how the boss moves while you’re looking at in using the spawn point as reference

size of diamonds to represent the boss is not drawn to scale

So the strategy to tackling it will be this.

When spawning, clear the pillars around the team spawning area  first, get the warriors (mercenary, swordmaster) to clear the pillars at closer to the centre because they are the hardest ones to kill without having a high chance of bumping into the AOE Aura of the boss minotaur. Reason for warriors is because they have dash, which meant that they can get out of the danger zones quickly.

Other ranged classes such as Bowmasters can also poke the pillars down closer to the central area.

Everyone else start clearing towards the pillars towards right side in anti-clockwise manner.

After clearing the pillars on the right side, the boss should already be on position 2 (shown above), and will head towards Position 3 shortly.

Start heading in a clockwise manner to clear the pillars on the left side of the team spawning point.

When the boss is at position 3 and 4, warriors and ranged DPS should try to destroy the pillars on the central areas, leave the outer rims to other classes.

After which starting clearing towards position 2 and 1, you should be done clearing all the pillars by then.

Once the all pillars are destroyed, the shield barrier on the boss minotaur will be removed, and he will pretty much stay put at where he is.

Finish killing all the small minotaurs that are still in the battle space.

Now that you have done that, you have just finished 50% of the right, the next half is going to be pretty tough.

Let’s move on to Phase 2

Phase 2

Before venturing any further, the whole team should gather far away from the boss minotaur and heal up.

After doing so, make sure all the important skills are off cooldown

example: beyond time, miracle relic, healing relic, highlander and other defensive buffs or skills.

After ensuring that everyone is ready here’s what you will need to know first.

The moment you engage the boss it will immediately summon a cow stampede.

The Boss minotaur will continue to do so, until you deplete 10% of his  first HP bar. (meaning 10% of his 5x hp bar)

So here’s you should deal with this first hurdle.

Only the paladins, mercenary should enter. Depending on the gears of your team members, maybe you might need more.

For our team, we bring in both warriors (an SM and a Merc) to move in with the 2 paladins.

Once everyone is ready, move closer to the boss and the priest will form a miracle relic bridge.

Other team members behind SHOULD NOT stack up, spread out and stay far away so you can react to dodge the cow stampede when triggered.

This is because 1 group of cow stampede is summoned for every party member available, mentioned initially above.

Mercenary should have empowering howl, and iron skin up, swordmaster enter with parrying stance.

Once the first stampede summon is over and the paladins are in place, start burning the first 10% of his 5x HP bar as fast as possible

From 5x HP to 3xHP, it is pretty much a give away. Make sure the main tank has aggro and everyone else should stand behind the boss.

Phase 3

Here’s how the team should be standing to prepare yourself for the incoming dancing beam once boss hits below 3x HP.

Red Diamond : Boss

Blue Circle : Tank

Orange Circles : Priests/Warriors

Yellow Circles : Force User/EL/DPS Classes

Basically the reason for such a set up is because of the dancing beam mechanic.

Once you hit 3xHP and below, the boss will summon a “disco” like ball which fires our yellow lights.

Along with that smaller black and white minotaurs will spawn.

The white minotaurs are pretty harmless, the problematic ones are the black ones.

4 Party members will be randomly chosen to be dancing.

When a party member is dancing, he will take increased damage from the small minotaurs who will bump and attack the players who are dancing.

Damage taken is between 10-15k per hit from the black minotaurs!

That damage is pretty high so here’s what you need to do to tackle it.

Rotate between casting of defensive skills.

Here are the skills you can cast to deal with the dancing beam.

Note: the casting frequency of dancing beam is pretty high, around 20-25s between each dancing beam from 3xhp to 1xhp

Debuff on dancing beam 15s, after around 5seconds it will cast dancing beam again, so it’s pretty fast

1. Time Stop 

2. Binding Relic

3. Miracle Relic

4. HighLander

5. Beyond Time (for consecutive casting of time stop as well as helping cooldown of other skills be reduced greatly)

Basically because the party members affected by dancing beam is random, whenever someone is in danger of getting smacked by a black minotaur, make sure someone goes and help him out.

The 3 layers mentioned above is to allow the minotaur minions summoned to be spread out.

In other words if you stack up together, the black minotaurs have more opportunity attack 2 members instead of 1 who are affected by the dancing beam at the same time.

Remember to DPS the boss after dancing beam ends, if not you will be stuck in this phase of the fight for a long time!

 Phase 4 (1x HP and below)

Once the boss hits 1x HP Bar, he will periodically cast cow stampede randomly.

There’s no noticeable interval between each cast, our party has suffered 2 consecutive cow stampedes before.

Highlander, Miracle Relic to be cast once you guys hit 1x HP bar and below

In other words, if these skills are not ready, do not bring the boss below 1x HP Bar.

From now on it’s a DPS Race.

Dancing beam will still be cast, but because the boss has a chance to cast cow stampede, you will realize that the interval between each dancing beam is alot longer.

Plan your beyond time casting before engaging the boss below 1x HP

Burn all your ultimates at this juncture and kill the boss as fast as possible.

This is because the risk of cow stampede summon is very high especially for low defense DPS Classes.

Yes this stage is pretty hectic but once you get the strategy right, it is actually less riskier than the Trio-Lizard Brother variation.

My team actually prefers the minotaur variation

Good luck and I hope this guide is useful once again!